How can Arkansas counties improve their political transparency?

In their latest research, “Arkansas Policy Recommendations: Political Transparency,” ACRE Policy Analysts Joyce Ajayi and Dr. Mavuto Kalulu discuss how county elected officials can improve the transparency of their quorum court meetings.

Ajayi and Kalulu begin by noting that some Arkansas counties still don’t publish the time and place of their quorum court meetings online.

Ajayi and Kalulu write:

• Every county should publish its quorum court meeting notices, agendas, and minutes online.
• Every county should publish this information on its own website and/or through a public-facing platform such as Facebook or Arkansas.gov.
• Videos of quorum court meetings should be published on the county website or on a public-facing platform such as Facebook or YouTube.
• Where resources allow, videos should be livestreamed so Arkansans who cannot attend in person are able to watch in real time.

You can read the full report here.

You can read the entire third edition of “Access Arkansas: County Web Transparency” by Ajayi and Kalulu here.

For more of our research on transparency, go here.

By Caleb Taylor

What one law that went into effect in 2020 will make county governments in Arkansas more transparent?

ACRE Policy Analyst Dr. Mavuto Kalulu discussed the benefits of in an op-ed “,” published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on December 27, 2018.

Act 564

The law requires all Arkansas counties to post their annual budget on a website owned or maintained by the county, the state, or the Association of Arkansas Counties beginning on January 1, 2020. Counties are already required to publish such information in their local newspaper. 

Kalulu wrote:

Are Arkansas counties the worst in the nation when it comes to publishing public information online? Six years ago, the answer was yes, according to a nationwide assessment of government web transparency, conducted by the nonprofit Sunshine Review. Thankfully, the Arkansas Legislature took a step toward ridding Arkansas of that label. Effective Jan. 1, 2020, Arkansas counties are required to publish their financial information online. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Spencer Hawks, who worked with the Association of Arkansas Counties to improve financial transparency.”

Kalulu spoke in favor of the changes before the Arkansas House City, County and Local Affairs Committee on March 7, 2019.

Kalulu also said the law would allow residents to more easily see how their county officials use their tax dollars. Kalulu said:

The more knowledgeable residents are, the more empowered they are to hold elected officials accountable. In addition, elected officials become more prudent when they know that residents are watching their resources. This can lead to less corruption and more fiscal discipline.”

Access Arkansas: County-Level Web Transparency

Interested in how your county’s online transparency ranks compared to the rest of the state?

You can find out through the just-released second annual Online Transparency Index from the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics, co-authored by ACRE Policy Analysts Dr. Mavuto Kalulu and Joyce Ajayi.

For more of our research on transparency, go here.

By Caleb Taylor

Faulkner County is the latest Arkansas county to follow ACRE recommendations to increase their transparency and public accessibility.

ACRE Policy Analyst Dr. Mavuto Kalulu discussed his research on the benefits of transparency at a Faulkner County Quorum Court meeting on August 20th.

Faulkner County Justices of the Peace were deciding whether to pass to require monthly expenditures by the county to be posted online. The ordinance passed unanimously.

Kalulu discussed the results of Access Arkansas: County-Level Web Transparency by Kalulu, ACRE Program Coordinator Terra Aquia, and Joyce Ajayi, a PhD student in the BT����Leadership Studies Program. Access Arkansas was ACRE’s inaugural index that ranks all Arkansas counties by how much financial, political and administrative information their websites contain. 

Kalulu noted at the meeting that currently only six counties publish monthly expenditures online. Previously in Faulkner County, only the Circuit Clerk’s Office published these. 

Kalulu said:

This ordinance moves Faulkner County towards greater transparency. The benefits of publishing expenditure data include better management of financial resources and enhancement of trust between residents and their county government.”

An updated “Access Arkansas” index of county level transparency is scheduled to be released later this year.

Interested in more of our work on transparency? Check out Kalulu’s policy brief, “Let the Sun Shine In: Improving Access to Arkansas Counties’ Financial Information,” which shows what an average Arkansan would experience when attempting to collect county financial information.

Kalulu also discussed steps to reduce government corruption and improve transparency in a recent op-ed entitled “” published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on August 5th.

By Mavuto Kalulu

Public corruption exists at all levels of government. The impact of the abuse of public services may be strongly felt at the local government level because of the direct contact these government officials have in the provision of services. In Arkansas, for example, county governments are responsible for  When public officials misuse public resources, it means less resources to provide such services.

Quantifying the amount of resources abused by public officials is not an easy task. By its nature corruption is secretive and hence the known cases may be but a fraction of the whole. Despite that, it is important to attempt to quantify the level of resource abuse taking place using previous cases. To do so for Arkansas I relied on information obtained from various Prosecuting Attorneys Disposition of Matters Referred by Legislative Joint Auditing Committee reports. Under the  Ark. Code Ann. § 10-4-419, the Legislative Auditor is required to notify appropriate prosecuting attorneys of transactions reflecting “ evidence of apparent unauthorized disbursements or unaccounted for funds or property by a public official or employee.” The reports prepared by the Legislative Audit provide a summary of the disposition of matters referred to the Prosecuting Attorneys of the State’s 28 judicial districts. Table 1 includes the total number of matters that Legislative Audit referred to the Prosecuting Attorneys at all levels of government in Arkansas in each year between 2010 and 2017. A total of 1,856 matters were referred to the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee over the 7 year period.

Table 1 also provides what became of the matters that were referred to the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee. For example, 286 of them were filed in courts for prosecution (column 3). Of particular interest is the 189 of the 286 cases that resulted in convictions. This number helps us calculate the amount of public resources that were misappropriated by public officials in the state between 2010 and 2017.  

How much in public resources did Arkansans end up losing as a result of these 189 conviction cases? Table 2 provides a summary of the total amount of resources that were abused in each of these years, as well as the total amount of tax dollars lost over this 10 year period.

The $12.6 million total is tax dollars that were abused at all levels of government. Of the $12.6 million, roughly $2.8 million was misappropriated by county governments. Table 3 shows the amounts that were misappropriated at county governments in Arkansas in each of the years between 2010 and 2017.

These $2.8 million are tax dollars that county governments could have used to provide better services for their constituents. Identifying misappropriation of public funds should not be the responsibility of Legislative Audit alone. Taxpayers have a role to play as well by requiring that their elected officials are transparent in the way they use resources.  The hope is that the information contained in this article and in the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics Policy Brief titled “Let the Sun Shine in: Improving Access to Arkansas Counties’ Financial information” would inspire constituents to demand more transparency and encourage them to hold public officials accountable. $2.4 million of $2.8 million misappropriated at county level occurred in counties that publish no fiscal information according the transparency report produced by the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics. Fiscal transparency can deter public officials from engaging in corrupt practices as it adds another layer of scrutiny on the use of public funds.  Preventing corruption through transparency is better than curing it through criminal convictions.

How difficult is it to get a copy of a county budget in Arkansas?

According to ACRE research , that depends on which of the 75 Arkansas counties you ask.

Alexandria Tatem, a BT����Schedler Honor’s College student and an ACRE student worker (who has now graduated) explains that Faulkner, Washington and Sebastian Counties are currently the only three counties in Arkansas to post their complete budgets online. That makes the job of finding out how county officials are spending taxpayer dollars easy for her and their citizens.

For the remaining 72 counties who don’t post their budgets online, Tatem received  complete budgets by email and mail from 55 counties. It took 30 days, on average, to receive at least partial budgets from 67 counties.

She never received budgets from eight counties even after repeated attempts over several months using phone calls and emails.

How can this system be improved?

Tatem concludes:

All Arkansas counties should emulate Faulkner, Sebastian and Washington counties and publish current and historical budgets online. Doing so makes it easier for residents to access budgets. The benefits of fiscal transparency are well documented. A 2017 research paper in the Public Administration Review titled “25 Years of Transparency Research: Evidence and Future Directions” by Maria Cucciniello and others shows that fiscal transparency instills fiscal discipline and reduces corruption which in turn saves counties money. You might be concerned that poorer counties do not have the resources to create and maintain websites like wealthier counties. But there are alternatives, like using the Arkansas.gov platform. In fact, a 2018 transparency report by Mavuto Kalulu, Terra Aquia and Joyce Ajayi titled “Access Arkansas: County-Level Web Transparency” reveals that even the counties that do not have stand-alone websites have some web presence through the Arkansas.gov platform. Financial information, including budgets, should be added to the information that the counties share with the residents through this platform.”

You can find out more about “Access Arkansas: County-Level Web Transparency” here.

More of ACRE’s work on transparency can be found here and here.

Tatem’s work on this project was supervised by Dr. Mavuto Kalulu, a policy analyst at ACRE who focuses on transparency and good governance.

Congratulations to Washington County government officials for the good work on publishing public information on their website.

According to the transparency index created by the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics (ACRE), not only did Washington County obtain the highest overall score, it led in each of the three types of transparency: fiscal, political, and administrative. With an overall score of 0.84 out of a maximum of 1, Washington is head and shoulders above the next county, Pulaski, which has an overall score of 0.62.

It is important to note that our overall assessment of all 75 Arkansas counties has revealed a deficiency in information being published online. This lends support to a report by the Sunshine Review published in 2013, which gave Arkansas counties an F, the worst in the nation. Only 3 other counties have a score greater than 0.50 namely, Pulaski, Benton, and Garland.

It takes a lot of commitment from officials to ensure that public information is easily accessible to their constituents but it is worthwhile to do so. Research published in the shows that transparency fosters greater trust between voters and their elected governments. Other benefits include improved economic performance, improved fiscal discipline and reduction of corruption.

One area that separates Washington County from the rest is  the publishing of bids and bid winners. It is the only county that publishes bids and bid winners online. Being transparent about winning bids and losing reduces the opportunity for corruptly awarding contracts. In addition, Washington County  is also one of only five counties that publish their current and previous three years’ of budgets online. It is also one of only two counties that publish audited financial statements online. Publishing financial information allows citizens to assess how well the elected officials are using their tax dollars.

Other counties can emulate Washington County and ensure that constituents are provided with easy access to information which enables them to hold their elected officials accountable. One way Washington County can motivate other counties to do better is through what is known as policy innovation diffusion. Research published in the shows that there is a tendency of individuals and organizations to conform to the behaviors of their peers. This is why ACRE created the transparency index. Our desire is that counties that are lagging behind will improve on their transparency. The index provides counties with a tool to evaluate how they compare with their peers.

Possible impediments to online transparency include limited financial resources and staffing constraints. We recommend that counties explore how best they can utilize the Arkansas.gov platform to provide information to their constituents. Currently only 40 counties have stand-alone websites. The rest of the counties have some web presence on the Arkansas.gov platform. One advantage of utilizing the Arkansas.gov platform is that it offers an opportunity to have a uniform template to publish county information allowing for easier comparison.

Improving transparency allows greater citizen participation which leads to better policy outcomes. Citizens acting as additional watchdogs help deter elected government officials from engaging in corrupt activities.

Online transparency also encourages better use of tax dollars. For example, Dollars saved from prudent use of resources can be used to improve education by hiring more teachers. Alternatively, this can also help reduce the tax burden on constituents through lowering of taxes.

Improving transparency is not rocket science. Washington County is Arkansas’s shining light. Other counties should emulate Washington County and aspire to do even better. Let’s make the Natural State a transparent state. Start with the publishing of public information online.

Mavuto Kalulu is a Policy Analyst at the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics (ACRE) at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. Terra Aquia is Program Coordinator at ACRE.

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Central Arkansas.

How can Arkansas counties improve their online transparency?

Arkansas Center for Research in Economics (ACRE) Policy Analyst Mavuto Kalulu and ACRE Program Coordinator Terra Aquia discussed this and the findings of a new Transparency Index at the County Judges 2018 Fall meeting on September 14th in North Little Rock. County Judges are the chief executives of county governments in Arkansas.

This inaugural index ranks all Arkansas counties by how much financial, political and administrative information their websites contain, Kalulu told a crowd of about 60 county officials.

Kalulu and Aquia note in the report that Arkansas counties earned an F grade in the  . They also note that only 8 of 75 Arkansas counties published budgets online for 2017–2018.

While counties have room for improvement in web transparency, Kalulu stressed that index wasn’t released to criticize counties lagging behind. Instead, counties should use the report as a diagnosis to improve.

Kalulu said:

We just want to see where we are. What we’re more interested in is where we go from here. Improvement is what’s so important for us, but you still have to start from somewhere.“

Why the focus on web transparency? Aquia explained that the report focuses on web transparency because studies show that a majority of individuals use the internet as their primary way to access information. Further,  internet usage in Arkansas has increased over the last decade. Therefore, counties should leverage online resources to ensure their constituents are well-informed about all the important decisions occurring at the county level.

Aquia said:

More Arkansans are using the internet to get their information. In 2013, only 16 percent of Arkansas had high-speed wireless internet capabilities in their areas. Just three years after that, that number had jumped to 58 percent. That type of jump in a three-year period is pretty amazing.”

The recommendations Aquia offered to county officials interested in improving their web transparency are:

• Take a look at where your county ranks and what information they publish using the Transparency Index.
• Utilize resources available to county governments on arkansas.gov.
• See what information is available on Arkansas Municipal League and Association of Arkansas Counties websites.
• Actively promote openness and transparency by letting citizens know about online resources available.

Coverage of the Transparency Index recently appeared in both and the .

In addition to Kalulu and Aquia, the report was also authored by Joyce Ajayi, a candidate in the Interdisciplinary PhD in Leadership Studies program at the University of Central Arkansas.

Is your county government giving citizens all the facts they need to stay informed?

You can find out through a new Transparency Index released by the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics this week.

This inaugural index produced by ACRE Policy Analyst Mavuto Kalulu and Program Coordinator Terra Aquia ranks all Arkansas counties by how much financial, political and administrative information their websites contain.

Washington County received the highest overall transparency score with Pulaski, Benton, Garland and Baxter rounding out the top five.

For context, Arkansas counties earned an F grade in the  .

Kalulu and Aquia note that only 8 of 75 Arkansas counties  published budgets online for 2017–2018. They suggest state legislators consider requiring county governments do so by amending state law. No counties published audited financial statements for 2016–2017 online. Kalulu and Aquia hope the index will motivate Arkansas counties to improve access to this important information for their constituents.

Other areas Kalulu and Aquia list as areas for Arkansas counties to improve are making contact information for Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests available online. Currently, only five counties list this information. Also, no county in Arkansas currently publishes financial disclosure and conflict of interest statements online.

Kalulu and Aquia conclude:

Corruption is a complex problem, and the attempts to address it will not all be simple. But increasing county web transparency is a straightforward way to begin. The information already exists and it should be made public. It makes officials more accountable. It makes citizens more powerful. Corruption shouldn’t happen. But if it happens, it should be easily discovered and quickly stopped. This index is a tool, a measuring tape for good governance, and we hope Arkansans use it to build a better and more transparent state government.”

Kalulu and Aquia will be speaking at the County Judges 2018 Fall meeting today at 9:30 a.m. at the Wyndham Riverfront Hotel in North Little Rock.